updated 09:10 am EDT, Wed May 25, 2011

LG Revolution gets official release date and price

Verizon ended one of the longer waits for its 4G smartphones by committing to a launch date for the LG Revolution. True to leaks, the Android LTE phone will ship May 26 for $250. The production version will also be the first phone to ship with Netflix for Android preloaded for movie viewing.

Like other Verizon 4G phones, it can create a hotspot shared by up to eight devices.

The design still has the single-core 1GHz Snapdragon processor, rear five-megapixel camera and front 1.3-megapixel camera it did when we saw it in January, though the past four months have brought some changes. Production versions now ship in black and have had Google search and maps forced off in favor of Microsoft's Bing. Swype's custom keyboard is stock, and the phone now carries a 16GB microSDHC card already installed in the phone when it ships.

We liked the phone's network speed and its display quality when we tried it, though the company at the time wouldn't say what the processor was. The phone's greatest advantage may be a layer of futureproofing as Verizon is promising support for 4G calling that will be publicly available in 2012.